The Gnostic Gospels By Elaine Pagels Summary

The book The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, is very informative and though provoking. For the review I have selected chapters two and chapters five. These two chapters will provide the material as we discuss Gnostic beliefs, and the evolution of the early church. We will also discuss the conflits, between “orthodox” and “heretical” beliefs and ideas, and we will also dive in to what audience Pagels was trying to reach with her text. First, what do these two chapters tell us about Gnostic beliefs? One, that there is another God. This is astonishing; the premise behind this gives pause. In the Secret Book of John quoted in the book it says, ““I am a jealous God, and there is no other God beside me.” But, by announcing this he indicated

The Gnostics, according to Pagels, believed that no matter if you were rich or poor, man or woman you had a right to participate in church. You could hold every role given time as every service lots were chosen for the various roles. Considering that the early church was a male driven community, the fact that women could hold higher power in church was unthinkable. The early church fought this notion also as heresy. The early church leaders believed that this threatened the hierarchy. The third belief of the Gnostics caused the greatest change in the early church. The “orthodox” church wanted a sure way to show; who was a Christian and who was not. Leaving it up to the individual to know whether or not they were a Christian was not good enough. “Evaluating each candidate on the basis of spiritual maturity, insight, or personal holiness, as the Gnostics did, would require a far more complex administration.” This would also bring conflicts between the Gnostics and the early

I chose the second chapter, “One God, One Bishop”: The Politics of Monotheism first. I dived into this chapter and it made me think and consider. It made me back up and rethink. It also helped answer questions about my own faith that I have had. Reading Pagels argument on the duality of God helped put it in a box for me. I was looking for a way to understand God. This chapter spoke, it pulled me in and demanded I listen. The chapter presented the arguments in such a simple fashion I’d never considered. The second chapter I chose was number five. “Whose Church Is the “True Church”? This chapter enraged me. It was difficult to digest that the fact the early church did not want to consider a person’s fruit as their true spirituality was because they could not measure it. They could not quantify it. This was a petty argument. The author convinced me that the Church was wrong on this argument; that the only thing leading this view was fear and